What is Wile E. Coyote's middle name?

Wile E. Coyote is a pun, a take on the word 'wily', which means tricky, or cunning. Naming him Wile E. Coyote just seemed like a clever way to call him wily. There was never a full middle name given for him, although in the cartoon 'Operation: Rabbit,' where the name was introduced, he shows and reads his business card to Bugs Bunny. It reads: 'Wile E. Coyote, Genius'.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wily

You may be right, Friar Tuck, but this site suggests his middle name was Ethelbert.

https://what-ever.fandom.com/wiki/Wile_Ethelbert_Coyote
message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=3817 no longer exists

There are only a few web sites that give Ethelbert as the answer but the following extract disputes that:

Some on Earth may insist that Honey Bunny is not a real Looney Tunes character, because her existence came about though the comic book medium, which consists of stories and events that are, by definition, fictional. This statement is completely valid. A comic book story has as much a chance of being true as Wile E. Coyote's middle name is 'Ethelbert' - there is none at all. To most toons, Earth comics are likened to tabloid magazines, full of malformed facts and buzz news, not worthy of serious consideration, but always good for a laugh. Honey Bunny, however, is more than a comic book character. She has been officially recognized by Warner Brothers, legally licensed by them, and she had appeared publicly with Bugs for a good two decades before Lola came. Her past may be a mite sorted (sic), but her mutual love with Bugs cannot be contested.

http://tta.toonzone.net/ttafanficmirror/stories/n.txt

Out of 27,700 sites on Google that contain ' Wile E. Coyote' there are only two sites that make that statement. The one Kerry888 highlighted is one of them. This looks a bit suspect as I would expect more sites to have that fact if it was true.

Ethelbert, per Jeopardy! final answer 1/18/07.


On Jan. 18, 2007, the final question on the game show Jeopardy was...

A: The middle initial E. of this character introduced in 1949 stands for Ethelbert.
Q: Who is Wile E. Coyote?

Ever wonder where the heck this "fact" came from? It wasn't from a cartoon or anything revealed by Chuck Jones later in life. No, it came from a single 1973 Looney Tunes comic book story.

I really doubt this was ever intended to be the character's "official" middle name but thanks to Jeopardy, I am sure this "fact" will be popping up for years to come.
http://toolooney.blogspot.com/2007/02/dirt-on-ethelbert.html

We all love Wile E. Coyote, the long-suffering Road Runner chaser. But, uh, what does the "E" stand for?

I guess I don't know. I mean, none of the cartoons directed by Charles "Chuck" Jones and written by Michael Maltese ever said. Only a couple of them ever even said his name was Wile E. Coyote.

But it has just been brought to my attention that more than a thousand websites say the Coyote's middle name is Ethelbert. The source for this is a 1973 story that appeared in the comic book, Beep Beep the Road Runner, published by Western Publishing Company under its Gold Key imprint.

In the story, which was called "The Greatest of E's," Wile E. Coyote realizes he doesn't know and gathers together some of his relatives to answer the question. One is an uncle named Kraft E. Coyote who informs him and the world that the "E" stands for Ethelbert. That is, as far as I know, the only piece of fiction licensed or otherwise blessed by the Warner Brothers company that ever said such a thing.

http://www.newsfromme.com/2015/01/09/name-game-3/

Here's the words straight from the mouth of the cartoonist who came up with the name "Ethelbert".

As you can see, he never intended to name Wile E. Coyote's middle name in a canon-like way.

So what's the answer to this question? It's up to you... you can either choose to take "Wile E. Coyote" as a simple play on words from the original cartoon, or you can choose to go with "Ethelbert" from a later comic book.

Personally, I like "E" being nothing more than a play on words.

It said the "E" stood for Ethelbert in one comic book story but that's just one obscure comic book story...and even the guy who wrote it didn't intend it as anything more than one joke on one page of one story in one issue.

How do I know this? Because, as some of you may have guessed by now, I was that guy. I wrote that story. I think I was around twenty years old at the time. I'm pretty sure, by the way, that that one was conceived in a lecture hall at U.C.L.A. while I was simultaneously jotting down script ideas and feigning attention to what a tedious Anthropology professor was teaching. Mike Maltese had been occasionally writing the comics in semi-retirement before me...but when he dropped the "semi" part, I got the job and that was one of the plots I came up with. For the record, the story was drawn by a terrific artist named Jack Manning, and Mr. Maltese complimented me on it.

Still, I wouldn't take that as any official endorsement of the Coyote's middle name. If you want to say the Coyote's middle name is Ethelbert, fine. I mean, it's not like someone's going to suddenly whip out Wile E.'s actual birth certificate and yell, "Aha! Here's incontrovertible proof!" But like I said, I never imagined anyone would take it as part of the official "canon" of the character. If I had, I'd have said the "E" stood for Evanier.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070304081357/http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2007_02_20.html